


Archipelago

by Surefall



Category: Cable and Deadpool, Deadpool (Comics), Deadpool - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M, MCU Nick Fury, Tags to be added, rated for language, rated for mature themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 13:05:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8015134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Surefall/pseuds/Surefall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate is falling in love with Wade's mind and Wade is falling in love with Nate's island.</p><p>Chapter 5:  Nathan regains some control of the situation and his REAL war with Wade begins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Fight of Birds

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Kite Strings and Dragon Wings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6351319) by [dragonofdispair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair). 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every Marvel team-up starts with an obligatory fight scene. So do some romances.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This universe is a fusion of MCU and a variant of Marvel 616. The Cable and Deadpool story line can be considered vaguely similar up to issue #6, where we're about to diverge.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, no ... wait ... I'll do it for a glider. A _good_ glider. In red and black. I'll send you the specs for the one I want. The glider up front, the money on delivery."

  

* * *

  

"The fuck does he want a _glider_ for?" Fury asked out loud after the phone call ended. The technician to his right just shrugged and gave Fury a helpless look. "He can teleport onto his damn ship!"

"Deadpool," the technician to his left said, as if that single word encompassed the whole explanation ... which, in fairness, it did.

"He _is_ crazy," Fury agreed, "but he's crazy like a fox."

  

* * *

  

"Well, time to earn my dirty fury money," Wade said cheerfully, tossing the helicarrier deck a sloppy salute before dropping backwards off the side, letting gravity take him down well below the carrier before he rolled and triggered the switch on the glider, broad red wings snapping out to catch the air, carrying him up and away.

  

* * *

  

A disturbance in the minds of the _USS Victory_ made Nathan look up. The SHIELD helicarrier and its escorts had kept their distance from the reborn _Greymalkin_ , but they had cruised like watchful sharks, waiting for the first show of weakness. Now the interest on the helicarrier had peaked. 

He blinked and the spatial disassociation of looking through dozens of separate eyes blurred his vision into a kaleidoscope of color. They/him watched something in red and black drop from the helicarrier's edge, a dozen pulses jumping in sympathetic adrenaline response, rattling automatic messages of help! support! that spiked through Nathan's head like fireworks. 

With a blink, Nathan switched to the minds of the bridge crew of the _USS Bluefish_ , the lower elevation escort, as they watched the drop of black and red as it fell, clearing the helicarrier's engines, plummeting to the right of the _Bluefish_ until it had cleared the escort. Only then did broad red wings spread to catch the air and soar away.

As it grew smaller to them, it was getting larger to Nathan, so he dropped their blurring visual in favor of his own. The bright red v made its approach without purpose, swinging back and forth as it tacked with the wind, spiraling in a loop de loop for no reason except perhaps the sheer joy of it. For once, Nathan couldn't tell for sure. There was something there, like the waver of a heat mirage teasing at the edges of his mind. Another telepath?

A powerful one to hide themselves so completely from him ... and he knew all the truly _powerful_ telepaths in the world. None of them would be gliding toward his island. 

Despite the keen interest of the helicarrier, Nathan merely watched and waited. As the red flier drew level with _Graymalkin_ , it caught the wind and banked sideways to glide around the island, circling as if checking out how big the island really was before it cut across, swooping through broad streets. Having cut across _Graymalkin_ , the glider climbed skyward, looping neatly to cross the original path, quartering the island. Quartering was predatory behaviour. Nathan rose lazily in the air, gaining altitude, a falcon ready to stoop on the unwary glider should they prove to be unfriendly. 

Red sails passed beneath him, heedless of the danger Nathan represented. There were markings on the red, black and white dots, like butterfly wings. Nathan smiled, amused. A whimsical patterning for a predator .... _wait_. As if realizing that Nathan had connected two and two and had gotten four, the glider rolled insouciantly in the air and dove, stooping on the island.

 _Oh no, it didn't._ Nathan dove after it, seeking for the tell tale threads of explosives, so he could snuff them first. No use breaking Deadpool and his glider if it was just going to explode anyway. Sails snapped out beneath him as Deadpool braked hard and shot out across the roofs, barely skimming over their surface. Not needing wings to fly, Nathan cut between the buildings. Deadpool banked left around a spire and Nathan teekayed the glider -- or tried to teekay the glider when the pigeons exploded into his face. Blinded, Nathan swerved into the spire that Deadpool had dodged, the glider nimbly skipping away.

Even sheathed in force, slamming into something wasn't a picnic. It took a moment for Nathan to shake off the impact. The birds were gone, presumably flown away. Bright mother, where had they come from? Nathan shook his head. He had no time to figure out how Deadpool had gotten a bunch of pigeons, hid them on a glider, and released them. That would take too long and the red and black idiot was no doubt counting on it to distract Nathan while he did what he came here for.

Nathan shot back into the air, looking for the flashy red sails and almost immediately found them, not far away, draped on a roof beside the central square. He landed in the courtyard in a second, expecting to have to track Deadpool the hard way now that he had ditched his transport ... except he hadn't ditched it at all.

For a single moment, when Nathan looked up, Deadpool looked every inch the predator. Perched on the edge of the roof, the glider draped behind him, completely still and alert, Deadpool was a raptor whose focus was both patient and eternal, trained with laser focus on the mouse that was Nathan. He reached ... and even here, high above the earth, distant from the insistent press of minds, it took long moments for Nathan to find Deadpool's mind. It was water, a quiet still pool, smooth as a plate of glass, reflecting the world around it ... so reflective, it had camouflaged itself from view.

"What are you doing here?" Nathan asked coolly.

Deadpool leapt smoothly from the roof, as graceful as a cat. The still pond of his mind was fading, sliding through Nathan's grasp like water. "I told you when you gave me the keys to this place that I'd mark my territory. And here we are, the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, it's a perfect day for a flight, or a walk. So be a good man and take my bags, for I wish to view the presidential suite. Chop chop." Deadpool made a slashing motion with his hand.

Nathan narrowed his eyes, "That's not why you're here. You've accepted Fury's contract ... but you won't be able to collect on it."

"Awful sure of yourself, Cable," the mask stretched as Deadpool smirked, "That tall drink of arrogance you're rocking is going to be the death of you."

"Wade," Nathan sighed, resisting the urge to roll his eyes, "you have literally never beaten me."

"That's not my name! Okay, it _is_ my name but you don't just get to use it, you asshole. Just because we've merged at a cellular level doesn't give you blanket permission to do whatever you want to me, with me, whatever!" 

"So this is _really_ about the facade virus. I said I was sorry, Wade, and I meant it," Nathan didn't regret getting everything he had wanted out of their encounters, but he knew Deadpool would have settled for just that _one_ thing and let the rest of it go ... only for Nathan to have taken that too. 

"You're not at all sorry!" Deadpool sounded angry as he threw a punch... but it was only a punch and Nathan blocked it, just as he blocked the kick that followed it and broke the throw hold. Deadpool didn't draw his swords, didn't go for his guns. Nathan was getting the feeling that Deadpool wasn't aiming to kill him. He couldn't verify that mind to mind, because he couldn't _find_ Deadpool's mind. The pool of still water, cold and deep and smooth, was simply _gone_.

"Is that what will make you feel better, Wade? Beating me up?" Nathan threw a punch of his own that Deadpool deflected, then had to use his left arm to absorb the return blow. A good hard fight, no distractions ... Nathan could give him that. Something to bleed out the anger. Nathan wasn't doing anything important right now anyway. If it also tweaked Fury's tail ... well ... all the better.

"Absolutely! There's nothing like some leftover vengeance," Deadpool went left and Nathan failed to turn, "that you've warmed in the microwave and dished up radiation wave hot," and promptly regretted it as Deadpool slammed blow after blow into the metal mesh, "into someone's _face_." Deadpool ducked down to the ground as Nathan lashed out, delivering a leg sweep to the back of Nathan's knees (and no where near his face).

Nathan caught himself on a hand and rolled out of the way of a kick and back onto his feet, reaching up to rub his shoulder. That had hurt. He remembered a little too late that Deadpool had enhanced strength. "I forgot how strong you are."

"I know that you appreciate my shapely muscles," Deadpool sing-songed with unholy glee, dancing left as Nathan sent a punch his way, "but really, Cable, restrain yourself from," deflected the second punch, and bowed backward in a shockingly nimble arch underneath the sweep of the roundhouse kick, "fondling me inappropriately." The bow rolled neatly into a vaulted kick that was just slow enough for Nathan to knock aside as Deadpool sprung back to his feet and lunged for Nathan.

"That won't be difficult," Nathan retorted him as he dodged sideways, catching the Deadpool mid-lunge and rolling him over his hip in a throw, "You're not worth fondling."

"He goes for the low blow! He shoots! He scores!" Deadpool hit the ground hard and tumbled out of the way of Nathan's follow up sweep. 

Deadpool regained his feet, but Nathan didn't let him take control of the ground as he closed the distance, aiming a blow for twin black eyes. Deadpool half-turned, avoiding the first strike and then deflecting the second across his arm. Not a deflection, Nathan realized a second too late, as the gloved hand twisted to wrap around his wrist and yanked him face first into Deadpool's other fist. He gasped, driving the metal fist into Deadpool's stomach. Deadpool folded over the blow, breath knocked out of him, and Nathan pressed the advantage, pile driving a fist into his temple and following it up with a rabbit punch with his metal fist. Deadpool staggered under the attack and Nathan grabbed him in a headlock, jerking him up and back.

Pigeons exploded into Nathan's face, their wings buffeting his head and shoulders as they climbed for the sky, gray feathers and flashing talons obscuring his vision. Blindsided by the sudden bird assault, Nathan dropped Deadpool.

Nathan stared at the sky in utter confusion as the pigeons dispersed into the air -- where had they even come from?! -- only to wheel and reform into a flock of starlings as Deadpool rolled away into a crouch. They dove, circling harmlessly around Deadpool in a swirl of banking wings and birdsong. 

That ... those weren't birds. That was Deadpool's _mind_. Completely dumbfounded, Nathan automatically reached for it with his own, only managing to brush the edge of flapping wings before the birds exploded upwards into the sky to avoid him. "How ... ?"

Deadpool drew his swords, a slow deliberate slide of steel as he unsheathed the blades. He turned to face Nathan, spinning the swords lightly over his wrists in a show of dexterity, "Let's dance ... and by dance I mean let's try to kill each other." The starlings morphed in the air, colors bleeding across their wings as they transformed into parrots, flash and feathers and rattling song.

Nathan lifted an eyebrow. Posturing birds ... and a posturing Deadpool. He folded his arms and sighed. "That's enough. I'm not going to kill you." Now that he could _see_ it, he reached for the other's mind and the parrots scattered, wheeling through the air in a dizzying pattern of color and sound, sliding through his mental fingers like smoke no matter how he tried to grab them.

Only reflex below conscious thought, instincts long honed from distant wars, stopped the point of the blade before it pierced Nathan's throat. "Maybe, baby, _I'm_ trying to kill _you_ ," the rough voice was disconcertingly serious, "So you wanna draw your telekinetic light sabers, Obi Wan Kenobi, and rock this casba?"

Deadpool flipped his swords as he danced back, a graceful whirl of steel and black feathers -- parrots no more, ravens flashed through the air in a whirl of glossy feathers and wicked black beaks. 

Nathan narrowed his eyes and took his suggestion, a spear of telekinetic force taking shape in his hand. The birds were a more cunning distraction than they initially appeared. He didn't know how Deadpool so smoothly controlled the shape of his mind or how he slipped effortlessly past the grip of an omega level telepath, but he intended to find out. 

Deadpool snickered and lunged, "Is that a ridiculously sized phallic object you're pointing at me or are you just happy to see me?" The first few slashes were simply tests, steel clashing off power as ravens banked through the air in arcs that carried then past the tip of each blade. Distracting, the way they whirled past Nathan as though they could truly strike him, dissolving into black and blue sparkles.

"The only one sporting a hard on here is you," Nathan shot back with cool malice.

"That's just the gun down my pants," Deadpool flipped over the swing of the spear, "Give me a grope and bang, you're dead." He deflected the back stroke and turned aside the thrust with a blow that reminded Nathan all over again that Deadpool wasn't just fast, but also inhumanly strong. "Get your hands off my hips before I punch you in the lips, stop your staring at my hey ~"

Nathan swung the spear up to block a strike, flipping it in his hands to switch his bracing hand to his left, "Sounds more like a recipe for getting shot in your own dick." 

Ravens barrel rolled, transforming into golden humming birds, swift and small, "Ah, my plans, always a flaw in them. It's the curse of villainy: flawed plans and monologuing the evil plan. The hero's not supposed to point it out, though!" The humming birds dove and Deadpool dove with them, rolling under the swing of his spear, blades flashing out. 

Nathan side-stepped to avoid having his legs cut out from under him, spinning the spear to knock steel aside. "Maybe if you stopped talking nonsense, Wade, we could get to the part where you discuss your evil plan? I do have other things to do beyond fighting you." He ducked sideways as hummingbirds slashed through the air where his head had been, avoiding the sword thrust completely.

"Like world domination?" Deadpool was a ruthless flow of steel, a much better swordsman than a brawler, far far better than rumor had credited. Without the birds to give him away, and Nathan's telekinetic defense, he would have been skewered. "Does that make me the hero and _you_ the villain? Tres meta!"

"I'm not here to conquer," He was better than Nathan, which was just plain aggravating ... and he had never displayed this skill in any of their previous fights, which was even more aggravating. Nathan didn't like that there were things he didn't _know_ about Deadpool, like mines beneath green fields, just waiting to blow a man to pieces. "but I won't stop them from following me where I lead. I'm here to show them that there's a better way."

"Remember that right to an opinion?" Deadpool turned aside Nathan's spear thrust with one blade, rolling over the shaft to strike with the other. Nathan turned it aside with a glancing blow from his metal wrist, steel squealing against techno organic mesh. "I'm taking it back! Just because you can read our minds doesn't mean you get to tell us how we feel and think." 

Frustratingly, Deadpool's mind was the only one Nathan couldn't seem to read at all. He could _see_ it, but it kept slipping through his mental fingers every time he closed his fist. "I'm not going to tell them how to think, Wade, I'm just going to show them _how_."

"We're in their homes and we're in their heads and we haven't the right," Deadpool said, an odd tone in his voice, " _You_ don't have the right."

For a long time, the strain of holding back the techno virus had crippled Nathan's telepathy. It might have even been that the techno virus had served as its own shield, protecting Nathan even as it protected itself. Now ... now there seemed to be no upper limit to either Nathan's telekinesis or his telepathy, and what limits Nathan thought he had had been blown out of the water ever since he had swallowed Deadpool. 

There were no shields in the world strong enough to keep the minds of others out of Nathan's head. Even here, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, as separated as he could get short of outer space, he could feel the distant press of minds ... their fear, their pain, their hope, their love. Too much of everyone clamoring for him whether he liked it or not ... and it was too much to express to someone as selfish as Deadpool, a man so completely lacking in empathy that he'd kill a man for a glider. "I've seen the future."

"So does every ten cent carny," Deadpool snarled and the hummingbirds burst into white feathers, transforming disarmingly into white doves, far too peaceful and lovely for the dark emotion in his voice. They banked right as they flashed past Nathan's head, a soft white arrow of white wings and gentle feathers. Nathan leaned away from them and the thrusting point of Deadpool's sword glanced off the metal muscle of his _left_ shoulder. "Wanna cross my palms with silver and tell me my _fortune_ next?"

Nathan slapped the sword aside, eyes narrowing. He'd given Deadpool plenty of opportunity to express his anger and now he was finished with both the fight and the discussion, "Cross _your_ palm with a _glider_ and you'll take a man's life."

"Just _your_ life," Deadpool's mask stretched around his manic smile as the doves climbed skyward and he lunged with both swords out thrust, "Besides, don't talk smack ... it's a pretty bitchin' glider. Have you seen it? It's a perfect creation, conceived with Chinese tears and dragonfly wings."

"I'm going to throw it off my island," Nathan dispersed the telekinetic spear in the same moment that he caught Deadpool in mid-lunge, force wrapping tightly around him as Nathan lifted him into the air, "after I throw you off. Then we'll see just how perfect it is."

The doves shed their white cloaks for the gray pattern of pigeons as they dove for Nathan in an angry swarm. Nathan drew his power and focus close, shaping it into a different kind of spear as his mind lunged forward to meet them, the entirety of his focus on piercing the swarm. The time for games was over. 

The pigeons parted as Nathan punched through them, the fragile membrane of Deadpool's mind parting like so much tissue paper. The birds swung wide, trailing feathers, and there was darkness at their heart, a swirling void, just beneath the covering veneer of their gray wings. It was then that Nathan realized it was a trap. This whole song and dance was just the bait, to lure Nathan into the black embrace of the waiting void ... but despite the realization, it was too late to pull back, too late to evade the jaws that snapped shut on Nathan's mind as the pigeons swallowed him whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Fury's Fleet:**
> 
> Since it has no name I can find, I've named Fury's flag helicarrier the _USS Victory_ after the ship the Decepticons built to replace the _Nemesis_ after they crash landed on Earth in G1. 
> 
> The escorts are named after the Dr. Suess poem about the fish. "One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish". 
> 
> **Direct Quotes:**
> 
> "Get your hands off my hips before I punch you in the lips, stop your staring at my hey ~" is part of the song _Take a Hint_ by Victorious Cast ... whose lyrics are hilariously appropriate for every person who has ever encountered Deadpool.
> 
> ["I'm not going to tell them how to think, Wade, I'm just going to show them _how_."
> 
> "We're in their homes and we're in their heads and we haven't the right,"] is almost verbatim from the movie _Serenity_.
> 
> **Other:**
> 
> Just what every author needs ... another WIP. It has taken me ... five months to finish this, so I don't imagine the second part will be swift in coming.


	2. Chasing the Rabbit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate takes a trip through Wade's head and the glider proves to be plot relevant.

    Everything is fractured. Nathan drops through broken memories like they were window panes. 

Vanessa is smiling. Her skin is blue and her eyes are red and when she hugs him she smells of roses. Wade loves her with everything in him. He'll wrap their love in vows and gold, twine their lives together as easily as they twine their fingers and the only answer she has to his question is yes.

    Here the Workshop breaks Wade Wilson. This is no secret. It's what will come afterward that will shatter him. 

Nathan faces himself. He defeats the children, because for all their power, they are just children and Wade is a man grown. He should be ashamed to pick on children, but he has no more will to spare for shame. Wade has no more will left to spare for _caring_ or for empathy if he also wants to get up every day rather than lay down and pray for Death. (If he lays enough bodies before her narrow feet, all the offerings her cold spark might desire, perhaps she'll finally take him too.)

     Here an entity devours the earth, consumes it, promising eternal bliss and joy for the low low price of _free will_. Wade defeats its champion and wonders if he should also have laid down and given up, let bliss come because life is pain. But its promises are lies. All promises are lies. Wade's eaten the poisoned apple before and look where it had gotten him. 

Vanessa is dead. Her blood splatters the walls, her body is broken, and Wade can only hold her and weep broken tears into her hair. She doesn't smell like roses anymore, only of death.

    There is only one memory that drove Wade to find Nathan and kill him -- 

    "I'll do it for a glider." 

    \-- and now it shreds them both with broken, burning edges. 

The One World Church has the facade virus because Wade has stolen it for them. It's a promise with poison at its heart. Wade should have learned better, but it _hurts_ and he wants the hurting to end. He wants to _fit_ again, to belong, even if there's no one to belong to anymore. He doesn't much care if it kills Nate. Well, maybe he cares a little. More than he should.

     **_THIS_** An island is sinking in flames, roiling in smoke and darkness, its metal shell shattering beneath the explosions that rock its core. 
     **_IS_** Wade can no more save the island than he can save _Nate_. 
     **_NOT_** Wade would do anything to save them. His Nate and his island. _Anything._
     **_FOR_** When it matters, he is always useless against the lines that write themselves into the sky. 
     **_YOU_** Against the walls that constrain their world. 
     **_Don't talk about fight club._** A thousand razors slash at Nathan, the sharp edges of a yellow and white boxes, tearing the memory of what Nathan has just seen from his mind, a hole that trails fragments like hole punches. The knowledge of what could be is not for Nathan to know. 

Wade can feel the facade virus like a million bees beneath his skin, creeping and crawling in his bones, wings fluttering inside his blood. The virus is gnawing at him, devouring him from the inside out, slowly dissolving his cells, breaking him apart in some misguided attempt to rebuild him into ... something. It has no direction, only misguided purpose. 

The One World Church has solved nothing. They only think they have. Just like Nate thinks he can use Wade to save himself, as though his healing were a gift rather than a curse. Nate is a fool ... and Wade doesn't know why he can't just leave him to die.

    Here an entity will devour the earth. Nathan faces himself, slapping himself in the face with duty, the kind of duty for which one gained _nothing_. Wade doesn't think he has enough of himself to spare for thankless duty. 

Being melted into goo by the facade virus is ... strange. (Usually being liquified shuts off Wade's mind. He prefers that.) Wade feels everything, oversensitive nearly to the point of pain. The breeze scouring his upper surface, every pebble pressing into his lower surface, the remains of his suit compressing him. He feels stretched and trapped. He can't move, he can't scream, he can't speak. His thoughts start disconnecting -- more than usual. 

Wade's been eaten before. He's been picked at by carrion eaters more times than he can count, waking only to lose an eye or feel sharp talons and teeth in his gut. (It should come as no surprise that animals make Wade's trigger finger itchy.) Consumed bite by bite by piranhas, a swarm of blade sharp mouths that mince flesh from bone. He prefers to be eaten by sharks, which is savage and quick, a death by slow chainsaws. Even monsters are better, which is all bones splintering, flesh tearing, being ground like a sausage while blood spurts, followed by acid, acid everywhere and in everything until he can tear himself free. (The only skill Wade really misses is the ability to pass out.)

Being eaten by Nate is nothing like that. It's much, much worse. First there's just movement, being lifted and swung through the air, as light as a feather ... but it sloshes him and he's _dripping_ and he's gripped with the sudden fear of disconnection, pieces that are his _mind_ being scattered about, feeling everything by itself, being lost and alone, abandoned, forgotten, how would he find them again? 

The sudden free fall is terrifying. He going to splash! He's going to splash everywhere! No! No! No splashing! 

The splash is IMPACT. 

Terminal velocity free fall from a skyscraper is a blow that doesn't just break the body, it shatters it into jelly, splashes it in a deadly arc of bone fragments and gore. Wade's never been awake for the splash before. He would do anything to not be awake now.

Impact against every drop of his body, terminal velocity free fall, ten thousand individual blows. He can't scream. He can't cry out. He splashes into Nate, scattering across metal and disintegrating flesh. Wade bounces across the metal, ricocheting until momentum bleeds away, only to be crushed into the tessellating techno organic particles. They're assimilating Nate, worn and familiar and weakened by the facade virus dissolving him from within, softening him up for sharp metal teeth. They have a much harder time assimilating Wade. 

Wade has also been pre-digested for the techno virus' convenience and like piranhas, they falls upon him in a barbed wire swarm, flesh eating chitinous beaks of insects, devouring every drop of him cell by cell, bite by bite ... but Wade regenerates. Even now, boneless and eyeless and mouthless, rendered into liquid, into his base components, he rebuilds what is destroyed ... to be eaten bite by bite forever. He can't scream. He dearly wishes he could scream. He wishes he could DIE.

Wade is inured to pain, to torture, to suffering, to humiliation. This is agony beyond anything he has had to endure before. If he was not already shattered, clinging to a semblance of sanity by his fingertips, he would shatter. His shattered pieces are being ground under heel into powder.

The tide begins to turn, an ocean surging beneath the gravity pull of the moon. Wade's healing factor shows that its teeth are always greater than those who would devour them. It doesn't assimilate, it assimilates. Techno organic particles are only so much cancer before the burning tide and not even cancer equipped with enough healing to defend itself. Undefended and helpless, the virus shatters its teeth against Wade as he starts to heal faster than he can be consumed, growing around the invading particles, trapping and isolating the virus, devouring it in turn and destroying it. 

Its death scream is molecules and star particles, rippling through Wade like an earthquake as its death throes tear into him like scattering shrapnel, shearing him with lashes of barbed wire and sawed teeth.

The pain starts to fade. It itches, ten thousand itches, like bullets working their way out of his skin, like a bone smoothing out, like a wound on the edge of healing. Wade can't breathe. If he could, he would just lie there -- he can do nothing except lie there, he is still just drops, tenuously connected -- and breathe. 

Only the facade virus remains, lurking on the edges of Wade's awareness, an army of misguided bees that have lost their colors. Nate is there too, worn and tired and shattered, as mixed up with Wade as eggs are in cookie dough, inseparable. Wade has no power to move himself, but his mass settles all the same, sinking deeper into Nate's milk soft flesh.

His whole world rolls, like going down hill in a barrel, the world spinning in a dizzying kalideoscopic whirl.

The bees have regained their colors. Wade's drops are scattered. They're torn from each other and spun away, ten thousand voices that can't scream and would do anything to scream. They're being compressed, being torn into smaller drops, into less than drops, into cells, being consumed by something more brutally efficient than even the techno virus. They can't quiver, but they would if they could, in agony beyond agony.

Torn to fragments, they are now being merged into something that is else, being assembled cell by cell with Nate. They are neatly slotted into proper place, all the places that are gaping being filled, all the torn edges being smoothed, woven together into something stronger and better. Pain fades as what is broken is rebuilt, what is shattered is sealed, what is dust is reforged. 

They are whole. They are not just whole, they are better than whole. They are clean and smooth and strong. They feel no pain. They feel no itch. They feel no ache. They are part of a latticework that builds itself layer by layer back into Nate. 

Trapped in a lifelong war with the techno virus, Nathan Summers is good at rebuilding himself. With healing imprinted in every cell, Wade Wilson is even better. The bees swarming through their cells, whose efforts built the lattice that they are both working from, can no longer tell the difference. 

They are all Nate now. Or maybe they are Wade. The difference, if there ever was one, has ceased to matter to the drops that called themselves Wade.

They are now part of a marvelous whole, working together in harmony. They are content. They are happy. They have _purpose_ here, meaning. The same healing that devoured the techno virus will smooth what is imperfect and repair what is damaged. Their tenuous connection -- the sense of self that they clung to so desperately -- begins to blur. There is no need for a self here. Self has no place here, where only unity and cohesion will support Nate who is Wade who is the bees who is Nate. 

Power washes through the lattice. A trickle at first, then a river, then a flood, then an ocean wave. If they could sigh in pleasure, they would. 

Just like _that_. 

This is what Nate is supposed to be. Not crippled by damage, not hindered by restraints, not devoured by viruses. He is meant to be whole. Not just smooth and bright and strong, but also _powerful_ ... and soon he will be _perfect_. 

The wash of power shreds their connection into bliss. They no longer know what is them and what is Nate and what are the bees (except they can still hear the bees, the beat of their wings is a distant rolling thunder across an ocean of joy) and it doesn't matter. Not any more. This is all they need to be. 

It feels good here, so good. They have nothing to compare it to because they have never felt this good before. The tide is better than food, better than rest, better than painlessness, better than sex, better than love and being loved in return. Fused to Nate and floating away in a sea of bliss, rocked gently by greater waves.

Each pulse of power dissipates them more, fragmenting them with pleasure. The ragged woven cloth of their connection frays. Piece by piece they are lost, subsumed. It is _wonderful_. They don't even know why they held together so tightly before. What was the point? There is no need to fight. No need to hold themselves together when they need only float in bliss. This is _peace_. 

Messiahs bring bliss. 

Peace. 

Joy. 

Remember?

    An entity devours the earth, consumes it, promising eternal bliss and joy for the low low price of _free will_. 

Don't lay down and die.

    Death wraps her bones around his hand, the delicate structures of her fingers dry and cold against the warmth of his skin. The dark fire in her eye sockets burns and her teeth are hard beneath his lips ... but the kiss feels like coming home. A welcome that he need only reach out and take. 

Don't give up.

    Lying on the floor of his safe house, Wade is safe from the Workshop but not from himself. The healing claws through his body in a battle that never ends, never rests, never gives Wade any respite, not even in sleep. 

Freedom.

    The Workshop burns. It _deserves_ to burn. 

Remember _freedom_?

     Vanessa is dead. Her blood splatters the walls, her body is broken, and Wade can only hold her and weep broken tears into her hair. She doesn't smell like roses anymore, only of death. 

They don't need to be free.

What did freedom ever bring them except pain? Loneliness. Heartache. Suffering beyond what anyone should have to endure.

They could just stay here. Forever. And be blissfully lost in Nate. They could make this better, they _were_ making this better. They could leave everything of them worth leaving and gently slip away. Why should they cling so tightly together? 

Without the will the continue, the threadbare cloth of their connectivity fragmets, links dropping one by one. The pulses of power are no longer mere pulses so much as waves, and they are the foam on the crest of the wave, dissipating with every crash upon the seashore, existing only briefly before fading away.

They have no more will left ... but Nate has plenty.

It starts as a tug. The bees, clear and colorless, are confused. Nate is Wade and Wade is the bees and the bees are Nate ... but Nate feels differently and he has the power -- because the bees who are Wade who are the bees have given him the power -- to tear Wade out.

The honeycomb creation of their merger quivers, the latticework bending under the strain as Nate's telekinesis rips them loose. One drop, then another, and another as Nate's shifting grip determines how best to rend them from their place within the whole. First they are a trickle and then they are a flood. They try to claw their way back, they try to grip tightly to the lattice they are being pulled from, but they have no grip. 

Nate is thorough. Not a single one of them, not a single cell of their scattered selves is left behind. They are all torn loose and sent away, expelled into bright light and cold air, forcibly and terribly reborn. After the pleasure, they are no longer prepared for the pain of rejoinment, thousands of separate Wade selves forced back together again, overloading each other with duplicate and different sets of memories.

The splash is IMPACT, a terminal velocity blow that shatters their mind if not their body. This time they don't splash or scatter, this time the distant thunder of bees forces them into shape, into the latticework that Wade and Nate now share, even if Wade is now so very, very alone -- more alone than ever before -- inside his own skin. 

They were _extracted_. Rejected all the way down to the cellular level. It hurts them worse than any pain they have ever endured, worse than being eaten, worse than being shredded down to the fragments of self. To be used and then discarded. 

It's hardly a surprise.

They weren't meant to be a part of perfect.

    The world abruptly restarts. 

 

* * *

 

"You're flying," Nathan said, bemused and adrift, floating in a warm envelope of endomorphins and rainbow bubbles. 

"I'm not flying," Wade informed him solemnly, the reasonable voice of a man telling him that the needle Nathan had stepped on was filled with acid, "Your ship is falling."

It took a dangerously long moment for Nathan to parse this information into something that made sense and then he abruptly dropped out of the endomorphin bubble, panic hovering at the edges of his mind.

Blue light flared as Nathan reached out to grab the ship. He had stopped the ship's fall, but he had forgotten to stop _them_. Nathan and Wade slammed down into the unforgiving surface of the ship with a bone rattling crash. _The splash is IMPACT. Impact against every drop of his body, terminal velocity free fall, ten thousand individual blows._ The ship slewed horribly to the right as it tore loose from Nathan's grasp with a painful snapback of telekinetic feedback. 

Not staggered by either pain or damage, Wade threw himself sideways and grabbed the glider as it slid past. He kicked free of the ship, aimed at Nathan like an arrow shot from a bow. Wade knocked Nathan sideways out of the air, looping a strong arm around him as the glider caught the wind, lifting them up and away from the death spin of the ship. 

No longer needing to worry about the two of them, Nathan desperately reached out and caught the ship in the air, feeling something tender strain and pull and nearly tear -- blue butterflies whirled in the air around him, warmth and sunshine and flowers, buffering the pain. 

Nathan gritted his teeth and held on as the ship fought, momentum and velocity trying to claw it from his grip -- there's green vines wrapping around him, supporting him, bracing his arms, curling through his mind. 

Nathan felt something give way in a burst of pain and blood as he pulled the ship up before it struck the ocean, struggling to level it out -- the beat of butterfly wings are fluttering words into his ears, soft and fragile, youcandoitivegotyounateyourealmosthere.

The ship hovered gently in the air, close to the water, before it set down and floated placidly in the ocean waves. It was safe for now. Nathan gasped for breath, barely noticing when they touched back down on the surface of the ship because he was too busy blacking out, insensible to the arms that carefully lowered him down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the _Where's Waldo_ of quotes: Quotes/references so indirect they don't need to be quoted ... but if you want to look for them ... there's one to _Alice: Madness Returns_ and one to _Transformers: Dark of the Moon_.
> 
> The devouring in this chapter is the one referred to in _Honeysuckle_.


	3. Lying-In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wade's real super power is "How to Ruin the Moment".

_The facade virus covers the Earth._

_Nathan can sense the virus even more clearly than he can hear the minds of every person on the planet, resonating with the virus inside his own body._

_It has a pattern, a heartbeat, a pulse, like the beat of billions of wings, striking a downdraft as one. The wings beat, as steady as a metronome ... but already there were notes dropping out of the pulse, falling aside like broken feathers. The life cycle of the facade virus was shorter than he thought. He and Wade were the only stable notes in the slow cacophony of destabilization, the leading edges of enormous wings, anchored by the healing that had saved both their lives._

_The strength of Wade's healing was almost frightening. A relentless tidal wave that had swept through Nathan, wiping his beaches clean and leaving only pure sand behind. A river that had swelled his depleted banks with enriched silt even as it battered down his bridges._

_Nathan thought his powers had no limit before, but now they nearly overflow his control. His ability to focus will waver before he finds the upper limit to his power, and even then he has already flown across the world and wrested control of the facade virus from the One World Church ... and despite that expenditure, he still feels restless, like there were bees beneath his skin just waiting to break free and take flight. He had planned to rest and regroup, but now he requires neither. His only need was to act, to give voice to the fullness within._

_He stretches his senses out, a sonic pulse of will that sweeps across the globe, combing through the pattern of the world as easily as a brush goes through hair. It sweeps through desert and rain forest, savanna and marshland, woods and plains, ocean and stream, from the highest mountain peak to the deepest trench of the ocean. It plunges into the earth, through folded layers to the heart of her molten core. It soars out into the sky until it touches the cold shell of space, the vacuum through which the scouring hand of starlight cuts across the void._

_Greymalkin was like a handful of old beads, cold and hard and tasting of time, rolled in ashes and despair, relics of the future in tune to a different world beat. Nathan has need of her once again. Her fragments are scattered, her seamless whole torn apart on atmospheric reentry. Nathan summons them, a call that was a command to her resonating atoms, a father gathering up his wayward children with a single shouted word._

_And the shattered fragments rise up._

_The earth parts, cracking open to let her shell fly free. Trees tremble and fall as she tears free. The sea roils as she rises from the depths._

_Greymalkin was shattered. There was no crew, no matter how large or skilled, that could repair her. There was no shipyard built than could reassemble her._

_Nathan repairs her in hours._

_Her pieces dry out. Rust is reformed. Dust is cast aside. Decaying casings are resealed. Wires are coated and rewound. Plates that were sheared are seamlessly reforged. Every piece of her is slotted into proper place, the spiral of her fragments brought to order, a puzzle reassembling itself on Nathan's will and power alone, until Greymalkin is one seamless vessel once more, reborn._

_She was bright and clean, as new as if she had just come newly commissioned from the shipyards. She was better than newly commissioned. She was faultless, reborn to fly in this world rather than above it, proof that the gift of healing could pass from creator to creation. Nathan sets her in the sky like a star, a light upon which to set their course._

_The focus and will necessary to return Greymalkin to her full glory, to forge her into the linchpin of his plan, to craft her into the cradle that will birth the new world order, has worn away the overflowing reserve of power. In comparison to the fullness of before, Nathan feels almost empty. Bereft. Alone._

_An automatic pulse of will made the facade virus sing to him in response, billions of lights flaring as one. Like an echo, it resonates, washing through him like a wave. Strength enough to remake the world was at his fingertips, powered by six billion lives, a slowly disintegrating hive of energy that resonates for him alone._

_Almost._

_The power of the facade virus was not his to rule alone. Nathan was not the only stable note. If Wade had enough of Nathan in him to see and hear it ... he could reach out and **touch** as easily as Nathan touched, run his fingers over the world and tear it asunder. _

_It's a risk Nathan's not willing to take. He trusts neither of them with this power. He doesn't need to understand the facade virus to know how to stop it. With a flick of a mental switch, he can render it inert and harmless, which Nathan will do now that he's made his point and given the world time to reflect on it._

_It takes barely a thought to reach Irene Merryweather._

  

* * *

  

Nathan woke slowly and painfully. Fingers carded through his hair, rhythmic and soothing, and Nathan leaned into the touch, pressing his face into the warm surface he was resting on, feeling it slightly give way. It took him long moments to realize his head wasn't resting on a pillow, but on someone's arm? back? leg? His eyes opened and immediately shut because ow! sunlight! The sun that was so warm on his skin was also determined to _stab_ into his eyes. The fingers stopped and he moaned a low protest -- making someone chuckle, low and pleased -- as the thigh? shifted under his head and a cooler shadow blocked the sun on his face.

This time Nathan was more cautious as he opened his eyes, lifting the lids slowly and carefully, squinting against the glare as he blinked furiously to clear his vision. The form that cast the shadow resolved itself into reds and blacks and then recognition as Deadpool made a low humming sound and his fingers slid back into Nathan's hair, resuming the previous soothing motion.

Memory started stitching together. 

Pain and pleasure. 

Friction and falling. 

A flight of birds that devoured him.

"You swallowed me," the abrupt vocalization made Nathan cough to clear his throat. Had he been screaming?

"Want to get a punch in for it?" Wade asked, serious beneath the light tone. "I might even hold still for your old, slow ass."

The seriousness made Nathan take stock. Despite the ache of setting bruises, he felt too good -- sated and lethargic -- to move just yet. Sharing a single handful of memories had overloaded Nathan with all the subtlety of a land mine. "Maybe a little," he acknowledged finally.

"Because I made you drop your ship?"

"Among other things."

"I didn't _intend_ to pop your brain cork," Wade's mask shifted and Nathan knew he was smirking under there, "Or any other corks."

"But you're not _sorry_ either."

"Are _you_?"

"I'm sorry ... " Nathan was never going to be sorry for surviving. If he had known that Wade was _awake_ , then he would have buffered him against the awareness that had shredded Wade during their merger, the awareness that Nathan had been spared, "that you're mad."

"Asshole," Wade said with something approaching affection as he shamelessly ruffled Nathan's short locks, "if you weren't ... I would have held you inside me until the ship crashed into the sea and killed you."

"My death would have torn your mind in half," Nathan pointed out, suppressing a shiver. Inside Wade's mind, Nathan has been powerless, a leaf tossed about in a raging river, helpless to direct his own path. He couldn't even say he would have been able to break free of Wade's mind under his own power. Wade had _let him go_. 

"Because I'm so mentally healthy and sane right now, huh?" Wade laughed and on the edges of it was madness, "Oh no, killing you ... for the low, low price of psychedelic brain tearing? _Worth it._ "

_Here an entity devours the earth, consumes it, promising eternal bliss and joy for the low low price of **free will**. But its promises are lies. All promises are lies. Wade's eaten the poisoned apple before and look where it had gotten him._

"I'm not that kind of messiah," Nathan said, low and fierce, "I've never been any sort of messiah."

Wade froze as if surprised and Nathan was uneasy with the idea that they might have had the same thought. He hadn't realized before how closely they were bound together. They were built off the same template, shared the same pattern. To share such a close resonance with another person could be a gift ... if only the other person wasn't _Deadpool_.

"I know that. Well, I know that _now_ ," Wade's answer was low and quiet and tired. He fell inexplicably silent and Deadpool wasn't known for silence. How long had he been quiet waiting for Nathan to wake up? " ... even if you do have a stupid martyr complex." Just like that, Nathan's nascent concern evaporated. If Wade was capable of insults, then he was fine.

"I do not," Nathan muttered, eyelids drooping, shutting tiredly against the midday glare. He didn't know how long he had been out, but not for very long if he felt so thoroughly exhausted, lethargy seeping into his limbs despite the hard surface of Greymalkin. He was too old to be sleeping on metal, no matter how warm, even if Wade was a sufficiently comfortable pillow ... but it was too much effort to move when Wade's fingers kept running through his hair, pleasant and hypnotically soothing.

"Do too," Wade hummed before his voice took on an obnoxiously knowing lilt, "Sooooooooo .... was it as good for you as it was for me?" Clouds covered the sky ... but there were no clouds, just the sun, shining down on them both -- and yet, Nathan could feel them drifting past as they cast their shadows across his eyelids. 

"If the mess in my pants is any indication ... " Nathan said placidly, not opening his eyes and not giving Wade whatever verbal opening he was looking for. He was no stranger to involuntary physical response to extreme psychic feedback and he wasn't ashamed of it either. Being subsumed in Wade's mind had made him _blackout_. In comparison, overload was a pale shadow of sensation. His spine was lodging a greater protest about the unyielding surface of the ship.

"Well, aren't we the lucky one," Wade said with a huff, fingers tilting so he could trace circles against Nathan's scalp. 

Nathan turned onto his side to relieve the press of hard metal, rubbing his cheek against Wade's thigh. "I could help you take care of that," he offered with a murmur. 

The tracing fingers paused, quivering right near the curve of his ear, before they moved again, "Nah ... we're already even, you don't need to make us _more_ even."

It seemed strange to Nathan that Wade was concerned with the _balance_ of their interactions, leveling them into a series of careful transactions, so no side had greater weight than the other. It's strange, because Wade's mind, where it brushes against Nathan, is organic and amorphous -- the warm, soft fur of a long haired cat, curling around Nathan, a fluffy tail flicking back and forth -- and not at all the neat and orderly lines of an accountant.

Nathan was completely distracted from attempting to bury his mental fingers into Wade's fur when Wade spoke again, "You could have just said you were pregnant. If I had known I had knocked you up, I would have brought you pickles and ice cream instead of my righteous vengeance."

Nathan opened his eyes. "What."

"I know I'm as popular as a basketball player, but you could still tell me I put a bun in your oven," White eye holes managed to look reproving as Wade tapped his fingers lightly against Nathan's forehead, "I mean, come on! You just birthed a ship from your dry dock, Nate, and then nearly dropped it on its head. It's obvious that you've haven't even had any time to lay-in. But I'm here now, darling. I'll make sure you and our baby get everything you need."

Nathan abruptly sat up, all previous good will vanishing in an instant, "I was not pregnant!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lying-In is an old childbirth practice involving a woman having a period of bed rest in the postpartum period after giving birth. -- Wikipedia
> 
> A oblique reference to _Transformers Animated_ is in there somewhere.
> 
> The second part of this used to be Chapter 1. Then I figured this chapter needed some sort of lead up. So yes, 8,500 words were written to set up this joke, which is ALSO the entire premise of this fic. 
> 
> I hope you're prepared for the dumbfounding amount of pregnancy quips that are to come.


	4. Laser Cannon Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Nathan Summers loses complete control of the situation.

A flash of blue light and Cable hovered in Nick Fury's command center, face carved from granite as he waved an upside down Deadpool in front of him like a red and black flag. "This is your idiot. You're responsible for him. Take him back."

Wilson mouthed something, but with the mask in the way it was impossible to know what it was. Fury didn't even _want_ to know. "Not my idiot or my responsibility. Even if he was my responsibility, I would have disowned him by now" -- Wilson gasped dramatically and clutched at his heart -- "for being such a feckless waste of talent and purpose." Fury was mildly impressed that Wilson had managed to make Cable drop the metal ship, but it would be a cold day in hell before he gave Wilson the satisfaction of knowing it. 

"You hired him and let him launch from this vessel."

"I allowed a private individual to land and use the little boy's room," it was a sad state of affairs that Fury could say this with complete truthfulness where Wilson was concerned, "Then I allowed him to leave."

Apparently realizing that no one understood him, Wilson signed something slowly in the air and with great exaggeration. A technician in the back stifled a snicker in a cough. Fury still didn't want to know, though it was intriguing that Cable looked like he might pop a blood vessel at any time.

"You know I can see you, Wade," Cable said sharply, even though he wasn't looking at Wilson. 

First name basis, was it? Though Fury could have told him that he was only encourage Wilson, but he had no intention of doing Cable any favors.

"Yes, I know you have a perfect view of my ass," Wilson's grin was so wide it could be seen through the mask and his elaborate pantomime promptly turned obscene. 

" _Wade_ ... " 

"Fury! Congratulate me! I'm the proud father of a floating ship! Isn't it adorable? This here is the little woman ... and when I say little, I mean ginormous and a man." 

What insanity was Wilson instigating now? No, don't say anything, don't acknowledge him. "What." Too late. Abort! Abort!

"You're the captain here, right? You can marry us! It's bad enough there's a floating ship born out of wedlock,but I don't want it to think that mommy and daddy didn't love each other." Wilson paused only long enough to lift a finger -- and since he was upside down, point it at the ground -- "Well, technically we don't love each other ... but we did swallow each other and daddy somehow managed to metaphysically knock mommy up. I'm am soooooooo proud of my super sperm," Wilson clasped his hands under his chin and was no doubt fluttering his lashes in some ridiculous manner under his mask, "but! All that means is I have to make an honest woman out of Nate before his papa comes looking for me with his laser eyes and blasts off my man sacks."

Someone had better be recording the _look_ on Cable's face or Fury was going to have to fire everyone on this ship. 

A technician to his left looked up at Fury with the most solemn of eyes and said, "No child should be without a father, sir." Someone promote this wiseass motherfucker.

"It's about time you settled down, Wilson," Fury agreed magnanimously. 

Cable's eyes widened in what might have been disbelieving horror, "You can _not_ be taking anything he says seriously!"

Fury folded him arms, planted his feet, and stared them down, "Did you or did you not swallow Wilson?"

"Technically that's true," Cable acknowledged with reluctance, "but -- "

"Did you or did you not just raise an island as unto Zeus ejecting Athena?" Fury plowed on. Wilson cackled "ejaculating" under his breath, but it was ignored in favor of the better spectacle.

"That's stretching this whole thing a little too far if -- "

"Have you or have you not had sex with some other individual not named Wilson in the last few weeks?" Fury asked with all the gravity of a rock rolling downhill. The bridge crew looked on with barely hidden anticipation. Wilson was solemnly shaking his head and Fury was tempted to ask how Wilson could possibly know one way or the other, but those were rabbit holes Fury refused to go down for love or money.

"I don't see how that has any bearing on -- "

"That's what I thought," Fury nodded, "Then I accept Wilson's claim of paternity and his willingness to take responsibility for the debacle currently floating outside."

Wilson chose this moment to pipe up, "Her name is Wade Jr., not Debacle." 

Fury was not allowing any ship to be named Wade Jr.

"We are not," Cable snapped and then paused, backed up and restarted, "It is _not_ named Wade Jr."

"The birth certificate can come later," Fury said with a magnanimous clearing of his throat, "If anyone knows of a reason that these two shall not be wed ... " He trailed off ominously, daring anyone to think to contradict him. The bridge was suspiciously silent. Wilson was suspiciously silent. 

Cable looked like he was about to have an aneurysm. "I object," he snapped furiously, "I am _not_ an unwed mother, the ship is not a child, and we don't need a husband to make us legitimate." Fury almost smirked over the fact that Cable was getting sucked into Wilson's madness. "Nor can you just decide to marry us, for no reason what so ever, just because a crazy person claims he got me pregnant!"

"I've heard your objections and as they are stupid objections, I've elected to ignore them," Fury said coolly, looking down his nose at Cable, despite the fact that Cable was both taller and floating in the air.

Cable gaped, momentarily stunned, so Fury cheerfully continued, "By the motherfucking power vested in me by the motherfucking United States of America, I pronounce you man and wife. Wilson, you may now kiss the bride."

The soon to be promoted wiseass motherfucker immediately clapped and the rest of the well trained bridge crew followed his lead, bursting into cheers as if they had been cued by stage hands.

Wilson, still floating upside down, reached over and put the palm of his hand on Cable's stomach. "Honey," he said with utmost seriousness, "you're gonna have to lift me up so I can smooch the daylights outta you." His hand slid downwards, "Damn, you have kept your figure despite the baby."

The light around Cable's eye pulsed as he hurled Wilson straight through the plate glass window and right off the helicarrier. The rest of the windows soon followed, exploding outward as a furious wave of force rolled off of Cable, brushing harmlessly over the bridge crew. 

Fury never flinched. To him, it was just sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Cable turned on Fury, the light in his blank eye burning as he opened his mouth -- 

"You're in an arranged marriage now, Summers. I've arranged it," Fury spoke first. He reached out a hand to grip the bridge railing, supporting his weight on it as he leaned forward to make his point, "Now that you're married, I expect you to take care of my agent appropriately. We'll have none of this spousal abuse or sexual harassment you lot from the future think you can get away with. I have my _eye_ on you, Summers." 

Wide burning eyes were caught out with something like surprise despite his anger, before they narrowed. "He's not your agent anymore," Cable nearly snarled, "Bodyslide by two."

 _So he's **yours** , is he?_ Fury thought, smirking as Cable retreated in a flash of blue light. He raised his voice to its normal boom, "Despite how quickly the bride and groom have left on their honeymoon ... I believe this occasion deserves to be celebrated. Lieutenant Hill, if you would please release a ration of brandy to the crews in honor of this momentous event?"

"Of course, sir," Maria Hill smirked in turn as the bridge crew cheered. She lowered her voice so as not to be overheard, "You aren't worried he might retaliate?"

"No, he won't," Fury said simply, "because then I wouldn't grant him a divorce."

"I don't think Summers will see it that way."

"If he didn't want to get married, then he shouldn't have been fucking around with Wilson's fragile heart and raising ships out of oceans, now should he?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fury marries these two assholes and regrets nothing. The author also regrets nothing.


	5. Into the Drift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathan regains some control of the situation and his REAL war with Wade begins.

Nathan caught Wade before he hit the water, ignoring the mercenary's complaints as he lifted them both back up, away from the ocean spray. If they were going to talk and Nathan was beginning to think they _should_ , he wanted to do it away from the prying eyes and ears of SHIELD. 

"I shouldn't have thrown you out the window," Nathan said abruptly, an apology without apologizing. 

"Spontaneous defenestration. It happens. My animal magnetism has that affect on people." 

"Please be quiet for more than two seconds." Nathan watched the flight of broken arrows that had accompanied Wade on his fall as they circled in apparent confusion before crashing into each other, starting to stitch themselves together into a broken tree. 

"Have you met me? I'm pretty sure that you have. So you know that short of gagging me I'm -- mmmmphhh!"

"That _is_ better," Nathan said with a smirk, having stuffed Wade's mouth with a knot of telekinetic force.

Wade growled around the gag, unable to bite what was behind his teeth, before going silent. Enjoying the momentary silence, Nathan landed, touching down lightly on _Greymalkin_ 's central square as Wade drifted along upside down beside him. "That mouth of yours gets you into so much -- " His eyes went wide as something licked him, then sucked hard. 

Wade moaned around the gag, lavishing the solid shape with wet attention. Nathan's telekinesis had never been molested before. Someone struggling against his mental grip or the casual touch of skin against force was _not_ the same as being enveloped and _sucked_. Sensation crawled up Nathan's spine, disturbingly divorced from him and strange, like the snip snap crackle of static charge ... but it was suddenly far too easy to imagine Wade doing this to something other than the physical embodiment of Nathan's will. "Stop that!"

Wade tried to swallow him instead, bobbing his head around the immovable obstruction, tongue and throat working around the intrusion. Nathan dispersed the gag with a growl. 

"Awww, babe, I was just getting started." Wade's mask stretched as he worked his jaw in a gaping grin, "Don't be shy. It's our honeymoon."

The bright, red rage that abruptly colored his world was all out of proportion to the mockery as Nathan clenched his grip on Wade, hearing bones give way as Wade gasped out, "Safeword, safeword, safeWORD!" breathless voice escalating into a yelp before something important broke with a loud snap and Wade fell silent and limp with death. Already broken arrows shattered, the tree dissolving into wispy smoke, a fading imprint against the blue of the sky.

Nathan's own gasping breaths were loud in the sudden quiet and the hand he lifted to pinch the bridge of his nose against the impending psychic headache was shaking. He clenched it into a fist instead to control the tremble. It wasn't _funny_. 

He had already buried one partner (and then he had buried her son, first in his heart and then in truth). Nathan hadn't just watched her die, he had felt it, her psylink shredding like a frayed cord, unwinding strand by strand until it snapped, and there had been nothing he could do to save her, nothing he could give her to ease her pain except lies. Aliya was dead (Tyler was dead and he had promised her, _promised_ her) and Nathan had failed her. 

Nathan had thought it was a wound that had healed as clean as any heart wound could, with no more power to hurt him more than it already had. Until Wade had pressed too hard and too far on the bruise Nathan hadn't even realized was there. He'd snapped ... and in turn snapped Wade like so much kindling.

 _Vanessa is dead. Her blood splatters the walls, her body is broken, and Wade can only hold her and weep broken tears into her hair. She doesn't smell like roses anymore, only of death._ Wade should know better. He knew that it mattered. He should keep his mouth _shut_ ... except Wade was incapable of keeping his mouth shut. He just kept digging and digging and digging despite the hole he and Nathan ended up in. 

... and Nathan should know better. Surely his control was better than this? Letting Wade's words get to him as though they were malice, meant to gouge him open and tear him apart rather than ... than whatever Wade actually intended, because it was hard to tell what he intended when he was gleeful and flirting and sly and Nathan couldn't peel back the cover of his mind to see what he _really_ meant. Was it cruelty? Interest?

Nathan's head tipped forward to lean against Wade's still warm shoulder with a sigh, hoping pressure would ease the tension behind his eyes. He was under no illusions that the sharing of memories had gone only one way ... so what had Wade seen that had made him decide to ... what was in Nathan that he would even want to after ... 

... and what the fuck, marriage?! An obnoxious joke was an obnoxious joke, but Fury!

Even now, Fury's mind was perfectly sane and ordered, coldly pragmatic, just as he expected it to feel like. Yet based on nothing more than following the lead of a field agent Fury didn't even like, he married them. Nathan could feel the jovial air on the helicarrier and her escorts. They celebrated the wedding like they were at a reception with a full service buffet and an unlimited open bar while Fury filled out the papers with every ounce of pomp and circumstance a warship allowed. They might be happy about it, but Nathan _hated_ being outmaneuvered. 

They had outmaneuvered _him_ , a telepath. Wade because he couldn't be read, and Fury because he hadn't stopped to think. He had just flown through the encounter by the seat of his leather jacket. Gloved fingers ran soothingly through his hair and Nathan's jaw slowly unclenched.

Despite the blow to his pride, it wasn't all bad. The positive upturn in the minds closest to him was an unlooked for balm, the reduction in their animosity allowed his war alert reflexes to ease. The bridge crew of the helicarrier would now hesitate before they pulled the trigger. That wasn't part of his plan, but he'd use it all the same. 

So for the price of some pride and his single status, Nathan had gained ... what had he gained? Wade? The knowledge he didn't have to look so sharply over his shoulder? A baby? Bright mother, Wade's ridiculous crazy talk was creeping up on him. The island wasn't their baby. It wasn't a baby at all! Wade didn't really think that the island was a baby ... did he? 

Nathan shuddered as the hand cupping the back of his head tweaked the soft short hairs closest to his neck and then he abruptly straightened, jerking back as he realized that there was a _hand in his hair_. He yanked Wade away so suddenly the mercenary yelped, "Whoa!" and then dropped him. 

"Ow!" Wade landed face first and crumpled to the ground with a groan before he staggered to his feet, clutching his nose. "What the fuck, man?!"

"Stop touching me." Nathan said sharply, more sharply than he intended, if not for the fact that Wade kept slipping past his defenses like Nathan had no defenses at all. 

"You're the one who was leaning on me!" Wade yelped defensively, thrusting a hand out to point at Nathan.

"You didn't have to grope me!"

"You started it! What were you doing leaning on a corpse anyway?!"

"I didn't lean on a corpse!"

"I was dead! You killed me!"

"I didn't lean on you, you -- bright mother, I was leaning on you," Nathan realized, utterly appalled.

"See!" Wade waved his arms in the air, "See! This is all on you! If you're going to get all fresh with my remains, of course I'm going to take it as an invitation to, you know, consummate our union."

How Wade could make something so disturbing suddenly sound ridiculous, Nathan didn't know. He lifted an eyebrow incredulously, "Petting my hair is consummating our union?"

"The last time I got too intimate with you, you popped a ship," Wade said primly, folding his arms ... and then completely ruined his image by squirming. Was Wade actually _embarrassed_ by the fact that he seemed to find Nathan's hair magnetic?

Nathan's lips quirked upwards in amusement despite themselves, "Oh, so _now_ you're not going to put out? It's too late to hold back. I'm no longer a virgin. The baby cherry has been popped."

"Which was also your fault! You're the one who decided to get handsy with my melted body!"

"My hands were not involved ... " Nathan folded his arms, leaning back, "and why are you complaining about it when you agreed to let me do it?"

"You groped the hell out of me. I have Nate imprints all over my everything now," Wade said primly as he patted himself, as if by doing so he could dust off Nathan's imaginary hand prints. He abruptly shook his head and straightened, "I agreed to save your life! Not have full body ejaculation sex with you and father your child."

"First, the ship is not a child. Second, no ejaculation was involved. And third, I'm not the only one who was dying."

"I wasn't dying," Wade huffed, "My healing was working on it."

"Wade!" Nathan snapped, "You were losing yourself! Your mind was disintegrating! I could feel you ... " he trailed off and then pinched the bridge of his nose to avoid looking at Wade as he repeated quietly, "I could feel you dying." 

At the time, Nathan hadn't been aware the same way Wade was aware. He had felt pain and relief and a light headed buzz that had slowly worked its way to effervescence, but the price of that bubbling sweet feeling had been Wade's mind fragmenting all around him, his _sentience_ dissipating like smoke. 

Nathan refused to sit idly by and enjoy himself while another man died inside of him. He had torn Wade out, excised his essence. With every piece of Wade he had liberated from his own flesh, the dissipating fragments had coalesced, slowly integrating instead of disintegrating, the sanctity of self restored.

For both their sakes, Nathan had done what was necessary ... but he didn't wish what Wade had felt on anyone, not even his annoying sometimes enemy who was also the confusing idiot that got them married ... like a _dick_.

"I was okay with dying," Wade's voice jolted Nathan out of the spiral of his own thoughts.

"I'm not."

"That was sort of the point," Wade nodded in agreement, "It was like the perfect trade off, right? You got all the good parts and all the useless parts of me just poof, melted away. I mean, what a way to go, man!" he burst into abrupt song, "Death through sexual healing o/~"

"I meant, I wasn't okay with _you_ dying."

Wade's impromptu song stuttered to a halt as he stared at Nathan, mask a blank field. "That's ... uh ... hmmm, I mean ... you ... " Rendering Wade to a incomprehensible stutter was almost nicer than rendering him silent. Wade suddenly thrust both of his hands into the air and waved them around, "I need two hands to count the number of times you've either killed me or attempted to kill me in the last few weeks and two of them were today."

"That was ... you heal." Nathan trailed off with a wince. "Your _mind_ was dying. It's different."

"It might not have been permanent," Wade said brightly, even though they both knew that Wade, everything that was really, truly, Wade had been dying. "I'm endearingly difficult to kill."

"You were dying because of me." 

Wade held up his hands, "Okay, look, no -- "

"You saved my life ... " Nathan frowned as Wade waved his arms around in exasperation and continued slowly, thoughtfully, " ... and just now you forfeited Fury's contract."

"I _threatened_ your life for my dirty fury money," Wade contradicted sharply, "I came here to _kill_ you!"

"You thought that I was _cruel_ , Wade .... and made more powerful because of _you_." 

"Don't." Wade slashed his hand sharply through the air, as if to cut off the mere suggestion of his own better nature, "That's not how it was. Maybe I didn't come here for the money, but it would have been a very nice cherry on top of my sundae of righteous vengeance. And now the money is gone. All gone ... because you are _not_ swimming with the fishes." 

Why Wade should protest every aspect of finer feeling was beyond Nathan. He had been inside him, had seen that Wade was not so entirely self-centered as he made himself appear. There was empathy in there and the ragged remains of duty, tiny buried embers that Wade tried his best to smother. 

_Here an entity will devour the earth. Nathan faces himself, slapping himself in the face with duty, the kind of duty for which one gained **nothing**. Wade doesn't think he has enough of himself to spare for thankless duty. _

Nathan had never equated that old fight about destiny with the broken bones of duty. Wade had been a good soldier once and he could be again. Those fragile embers could become bigger, could burst into flames, if only someone would encourage them, breath gently on them to help them grow ... 

"Which I appreciate."

"You should. That would have been the nicest death I gave anyone!"

"That's not what I appreciate ... " Nathan smiled, slow and lazy, "You came here to end me before I did to everyone else what I had already done to you." 

"I didn't care about them!" Wade snapped, infuriated, "I cared about _me_."

"Liar."

"It's not a lie!"

"It is," Nathan stepped forward and Wade straightened to his full height rather than retreat, "Join me."

Wade stared at him blankly before his mask twisted with the intensity of his smirk, "And you'll make me more powerful than I can possibly imagine?"

"This isn't an evil empire. Phenomenal cosmic power isn't on the table. I'll keep you in beer and tacos, though."

"What, no chimichangas?"

"Wade ... do you even _like_ chimichangas?"

"Maybe not as much as tacos ... or enchiladas ... or quesadillas ... or pancakes ... or -- that's not the point!" Wade folded his arms and turned his head away, managing to glare at him sideways despite the mask.

"Isn't it? You know, I need someone to keep me honest ... " Nathan trailed off suggestively.

"Me? Keep someone honest? That's a laugh," Wade snorted, "And besides, no one makes you do anything. You do whatever the fuck you want." He swept his arm out grandly, "Like turn the world a fuck ugly shade of pink and have a shiny metal baby."

"Something we have in common," Nathan retorted coolly, "considering _your_ latest exploit got us married on a _whim_." 

"That wasn't a whim. That was completely necessary!" Wade protested, "You're too pretty, Nate!" He put a hand to his chest and continued primly, "If I left you single, some dastardly fellow could come along and take advantage of your youth and naivete only to leave you barefoot and pregnant on the streets, forced to sell yourself for bread!"

"My youth and naivete, hmm?"

"You're a fragile dewy wisp, my darling, innocent and pure." Wade said earnestly, clasping his hands under his chin.

Nathan laughed. He couldn't help it. The image Wade's words invoked was just so completely the opposite of everything Nathan actually was that it became funny.

Wade's head tilted as he watched Nathan in silence, tucking his hands behind his back as he leaned forward with open interest.

"Wade ... " Nathan managed as his laughter subsided, "you're ridiculous."

"But you still laughed," Wade said brightly, rocking forward on his toes.

"So I did." Nathan murmured, smiling.

"You should laugh more often." It was spoken with a firmness, an intensity that made something tight and wary in Nathan's heart ease. He was suddenly sure that Wade hadn't married them out of malice. Some bizarre cocktail of interest and a thoroughly crazy devotion to a joke, maybe, but never out of cruelty. 

So Nathan had no reservations when he held out his hand expectantly, "Well?"

"Well what?" Wade looked at his hand in the same way people looked at snakes.

"I think it's time I gave you that tour. Didn't you want to see the presidential suite?"

Wade slapped their palms together and Nathan caught on and held, brief and tight. "Does it have a jacuzzi?"

"No, but I don't think you'll be disappointed." Nathan released his hand and turned, walking through the courtyard toward the building that held his rooms, knowing that Wade would follow.

"I'm already disappointed," Wade huffed, falling into step beside him, "Soooo ... what's it called? The ship, I mean, not the presidential suite."

"It used to be called _Greymalkin_."

"That's not a name, that's a cat. This is not a cat, Nate. And it isn't gray. It's silver. A very _nice_ silver, actually, like your arm."

"Well, then ... I guess I'll just have to call it _Hope_."

"The fuck you will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you playing reference bingo: I think the references to _Pirates of the Caribbean_ , _Star Wars_ , and _Aladdin_ are obvious.
> 
> This concludes what is basically the first arc.


End file.
